


Colliding on a Backdrop of Blue

by momebie (katilara)



Category: Captain America (Movies), Nightwing (Comics), Winter Soldier (Comics)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-24
Updated: 2013-01-24
Packaged: 2017-11-26 16:43:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 12,597
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/652330
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/katilara/pseuds/momebie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Winter Soldier has started to malfunction and wander off after completing his missions. His handlers chase him to Blüdhaven, where they get more of a resistance than they expected from the local vigilante.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Colliding on a Backdrop of Blue

**Author's Note:**

> I started this a few months ago for my roommate and have since learned that there was an actual canon crossover with these two. That is not addressed here. I apologize, I just didn't know. Maybe in the next one. This is a mix of comic-verse and Captain America movie-verse. I basically just used the bits I wanted. I hope you find it as entertaining as we do.

From his perch on the roof of the pogey plant Dick could see almost all of the activity as it happened below him on the Blüdhaven wharf. The late night dock workers were securing rigging on incoming ships. There were a few drunks teetering at the edge of the far pier having a screaming match that he was sure Bruce could hear way back in Gotham. Several women paced in the shadows, waiting for someone to notice them. Everything was more or less as it always was, with the exception of the man curled up in the alley directly beneath him. He was hunched deep inside a dirty trench coat. Dick wouldn’t have taken notice of him if not for the intermittent glint of metal in the waning pools of light from the street lamps. A knife, probably. 

Dick tried not to get involved in situations that were still fizzling, but the usual element of the area meant that if the man did pull a knife on someone it would raise an alarm that would bring all of the dirty Blüdhaven cops raining down on the area. He had a hard enough time keeping track of them in the parts of the city that weren’t housing large shipments of cocaine. No, it was best to stop this before it started. 

He jumped down into the dirty walking space between the tightly nestled warehouses and landed to the left of the man. Dick immediately took a hit to the chest and found himself lying on his back on the concrete. ”What the fuck?” he gasped. Before he could sit up the man was kneeling over him holding him down.

The face that looked down at him was shadowed by stringy dark hair that framed a square chin and haunted, almost empty eyes. Around his throat was an incredibly strong arm in a cold metal glove. That would have been the glint he saw then. ”Name, rank, and serial number,” the man said, with a haggard voice. ”Or I’ll kill you where you are.”

“Nightwing, uh….Nightwing, and I don’t have one?” Dick said. 

“You a hero or something, kid?” 

His assailant didn’t look that much older than he was. Dick chafed against the word ‘kid’. “Something like that.” 

The man stared him down for a few more heartbeats before pulling back and letting him go. “I don’t guess you’ll make too much trouble for me “

Dick sat up and rubbed his throat with his fingers. ”That’s some grip you’ve got there, uh....”

“James, I think,” the man said. He muttered something in a language Dick recognized as Russian, but he couldn’t translate it himself.

“I’m sorry?”

“If you know what’s good for you you’ll leave this place before they find me,” he said, looking over his shoulder and checking both ends of the alley. 

Dick assessed the sheer mass of the man. “I think it would be hard to miss you.” 

James looked him up and down and then stood. With his back to the light Dick couldn’t make out his face, but he could practically hear the sneer in the way James said, “Fly on home, blue jay. This isn’t the place for do-gooding vigilantes in skin tight suits.”

“This is my city.” Dick stood, placed his hand on the hilt of his escrima stick, and drew it to hold out in front of him. James was stronger than he was, and fast, but on guard Dick knew he could be faster. ”And I think I know my place in it better than you.”

James didn’t move. He didn’t flinch. He didn’t even blink. ”It’s a cold night out. Aren’t you worried you’ll freeze in that?” he asked. ”I know I am.” 

“I favor cold nights,” Dick said. 

James smirked and reached under his trench coat. Dick steadied himself for an attack. For half a minute the only sounds in the port-side alleyway were shuddering breaths. Before either of them made a move, the quiet was beaten away with the tinny staccato of gunfire.

A bullet grazed Dick’s shoulder. The fabric tore and blood welled up as he winced, jumping sideways and taking a hold of the pogey plant’s fire escape ladder. James ran past him, toward the men shooting at them. 

“Tough and stupid,” Dick muttered. He pushed away from the ladder and crouched, running low and close to the wall, hoping the shadows would keep from giving their attackers too much of a target. 

There were four men. Two were holding semi-automatics and shooting cascades of bullets down the alley. One was loading a clip into a large handgun. The fourth man was standing behind the others with a radio pressed to his ear. By rushing them, James had taken them just as off guard as he had Dick. They didn’t have time to react before he wrenched away one of the semi-automatics and used the butt to smash its owner in the face, sending him sprawling backwards. He then took hold of it properly, swung around to the second man, and shot him in the throat. 

The third gunman backed away slowly, but the one with the radio turned and sprinted away into the darkness. ”I’ve got him!” Dick called. He dodged a bullet from the handgun, skirted around a dumpster, and followed after at a dead run.

It didn’t take him long to catch up. In mid-step he reached out and grabbed the man by the back of the neck. Using him as a pivot, Dick came up beside him and slammed him into the metal warehouse wall. The sound reverberated around them and off into the dark.

“You don’t understand!” The man’s accent was sharp and clipped. Also Russian. 

“I’m pretty sure attempted murder is enough to get your passport revoked, pal,” Dick said. He was still holding the man by the neck, pushing his cheek into the building. 

“The Winter Soldier cannot be allowed to go free. He is dangerous. We’re only trying to help your country.”

“I don’t know from any Winter Soldier. If you’re referring to my new friend back there, the man’s a piece of work, sure,” Dick said. ”But he isn’t the one who shot a hole in my only clean uniform, so you understand why it’s you I’m testy with.”

“He’s a killer.” The man’s voice rose with every word. He sounded half hysterical. Dick wondered what it was he feared the most: the man he was after, or the superior who would no doubt punish him if he failed. “Let us take him back to Russia where he belongs.”

Heavy footsteps approached them. “I don’t know where I belong.” 

Dick turned his head to see James standing behind him. 

“I don’t know where I belong,” James said again, stepping forward, his imposing frame blocking the hazy glow from the dim security lights blinking on behind him, “but it’s not with you.” He pushed Dick aside and grabbed the back of the man’s head with his metal hand. Pulling him back, he slammed his head forward into the building three times before letting him drop to the concrete, unconscious. 

“That was uncalled for.” Dick looked from the crumpled figure on the ground back up to James’s grimly set mouth. ”Who are these guys?” 

“KGB, probably. Everyone is hunted by a past,” James said. ”Mine is just more proactive than most.” 

Dick reached up and cupped the wound on his shoulder with his left hand, it stung, but it hadn’t hit any muscle. ”I would say my past doesn’t get me shot at, but that would be a lie. Do you have a place to sleep for the night?”

“The alley should be fine. They won’t be able to mobilize more people until the morning, and by then I’ll be long gone.”

“Yeah, about that,” Dick said.” I think it’s best I don’t let you out of my sight. Let’s round up the dirtbags for my police friends and then get you a shower. I’m not the only one who could stand a little cleaning up.” 

Calling the Blüdhaven cops down to the docks was the last thing Dick wanted to do on a good day, but he couldn’t just leave their attackers laid out in the alleyways in good conscience. You never knew when something ten times worse would crawl right up out of the water and eat the evidence you’d need later. 

They returned to his perch on the roof the pogey plant—Dick squatted silently in the shadows and James paced a line up and down the middle between the ventilation shafts—until Dick was sure that there was at least one good cop responding to his call. He stood to go once the men were being handcuffed and frog walked out to the waiting patrol cars.

“They’ll be out by morning,” James said. He picked up his duffel bag and slung it over his shoulder. ”And they won’t leave without their target.” 

“You seem to know an awful lot about what’s going on for someone who doesn’t remember who he is.”

James stopped pacing next to Dick at the edge of the corrugated metal and watched the police cars as they disappeared up the dock road. “I get the impression I’m valuable to them, is all.” 

“Right. Well I hope they have insurance. Let’s get on home.” 

James hung back. “Are you sure this is a thing you want to invite into your home? You don’t even know me. I might be exactly who they say I am.” 

“You might, but you don’t look like you want to be. And even if you are, you wouldn’t be the worst thing that’s been in my apartment since I moved here. I also have a soft spot for hopeless cases.” Dick took a running start and jumped from the pogey plant’s roof across to the next warehouse over. James followed after him. The heavy steps he took over the metal and concrete in his thick black boots made enough racket to sound like they were fighting a war of their own.

. . .

Dick let James in through the window he used to come and go for patrols and then double locked it behind them. ”Drop your stuff anywhere, there’s no one here but me.” He slipped off the top part of his costume and crossed the large empty space of his loft to the kitchen sink to rinse his wound out.

Out of the corner of his eye he watched his guest shuffle out of the trench coat. James was wearing black cargo pants with a tight black sleeveless shirt, both of which contrasted greatly against the bright, silver steel of his left arm. There was a red star in the center of his shoulder.

Dick let out a low whistle. He thought the man had been wearing gauntlets, not that he was actually bionic. “Well, I’ll be damned,” Dick said. ”I guess you’re the property of Mother Russia after all.”

James frowned. ”I’m not anyone’s property.”

“The nice gentlemen who accosted us in the alley seem to disagree.” Dick wiped his wet arm off with a clean towel and moved to his cabinets to look for the medicine and gauze. “So you know nothing about this Winter Soldier character they’re after, then?” 

“I-I don’t know,” James said.

Dick poured peroxide onto his wound and let it bubble up before wiping it away. Then he pulled two beers from the fridge and set one at the far end of the counter before settling onto a stool and cracking open his own. ”How can I be sure you are who you say you are if you can’t?”

It was an unfair question and Dick knew it, but he’d learned over time that it was not the fair, polite questions that got results.

James dropped heavily onto the floor and started unlacing his boots. ”Maybe I’m not James Barnes. I feel like I am. I remember pieces of his life. But they scatter, like broken glass over a concrete floor, whenever I try to pin them down. I remember the man they’re looking for, the Winter Soldier, as well, though less clearly right now. I’m looking through a filter at two lives that don’t fit together. They wax and wane.”

“Which one would you rather be?”

“I don’t know,” James said. ”There’s flaring pain in both of them, just for different reasons.” 

“Who was James?” 

James looked up at him with a long face and just stared into the middle distance for several beats. “He was a good man.” Then he looked back down and pulled off his boots and socks and sat for a moment, looking at his feet. He shuddered hard enough for Dick to see the movement and clawed at his shirt, fighting his way out of it. His torso was pink and red: blood, water-painted with sweat. There were no cuts on him, only bruises. Dick guessed that the blood wasn’t his.

“Why don’t you go ahead and shower,” Dick said. ”I’ll just…burn all of that.” He waved vaguely in James’s direction with the bottle before taking a sip. 

James wadded the shirt in his hands and held it to his chest for a moment before dropping it to the floor and standing. ”I wonder which one of me you’d burn with it,” he said grimly. He then turned, taking the beer, and walked across the loft to the bathroom. Confidently exploring without asking which way to go.

Dick gathered James’s shirt and socks and dropped them in the small washing machine in the corner. Then he went and dug through his dresser for a pair of sweatpants or running shorts that might fit someone James’s size. He turned up little, since most of the people who ever visited him were quite a bit smaller than he was. In the end he came up with a pair of track pants that had always been too big and a t-shirt that might or might not work. 

James came out of the shower with a towel low around his waist, looking dazed. Dick pressed the clothing into his hands and James nodded slightly before retrieving his pants to give to Dick and then going back into the bathroom to get dressed. Dick placed his pants in with his other clothing and started the cycle on the washer. When Dick saw James again he didn’t look any more like he knew where he was or what he was doing than he had before going in. 

“I’ve got these for you,” Dick said, handing him a thick blanket and a pillow. “If you’re okay with bunking on the couch.” 

James took them and gave him a small, straight lipped nod. Dick felt vaguely like he’d won the lottery for just getting the corners of James’s lips out of their permanent dip. “Your couch can’t be any less comfortable than most of the places I’ve slept in the preceding years. If I can trust my brain, between missions they keep me stuffed in a frozen sleep.” 

Dick set his jaw to try and keep his mouth from falling open. Just what was standing in front of him and who had created it? “Right, well. Sweet dreams?” 

“I won’t hold my breath,” James said, and turned away. 

Dick slipped into his bedroom and shut the door, locking it behind him. Not that it would stop a man that size if he got it in his mind that he needed to kill Dick in the middle of the night, but at least it would give him a small amount of warning. He finally fell asleep counting the things that could go wrong.

. . .

Dick woke up to radio chatter coming from the living room. It put him immediately on edge, and it took him a moment to remember he was not alone and wasn’t supposed to be. The digital alarm clock perched on his dresser told him that it was 9:15. He stretched and rubbed the sleep out of his eyes with the heels of his hands. The closest shirt to him was a dirty grey Property of Gotham Rogues tee balled at the foot of his bed. He pulled it on, took a breath to steel himself for what he might find, and exited the bedroom.

James was standing in the middle of the kitchen in only the red track pants from the night before, framed by the counter and the upper cupboards, holding a carton of milk in his metal hand. Dick’s police scanner was set up on the coffee table in the living room and the bored voice of the AM dispatcher was calling out the morning round up. James didn’t lift his arm to drink the milk or respond in any way to Dick’s appearance. He didn’t move at all, except for a slight tremor in the flesh and blood arm at rest. 

Dick took a step forward, hoping his bare feet would be soft enough against the wooden floor that they wouldn’t announce his presence. Judging by what little he knew of the guy, he was sure he didn’t want to startle him. He waited for James to put the carton down, but nothing happened. 

“Hey,” Dick said, his voice barely louder than the radio. “Hey man, how’s it going?”

The response was sudden. James dropped the carton and turned towards Dick, clutching at his side, searching for a gun that Dick was thankful wasn’t there. The milk carton hit the floor with a thick pop. 

Dick raised his hands in surrender. “It’s just me, man.” 

James blinked rapidly and then clutched at his head with his hands. “No,” he said. 

Dick eased his way across the living room and into the kitchen area. He picked up the carton and used a handful of paper towels to sop up the spill. Moving gingerly around James, who still hadn’t moved more than a pace from where Dick found him, he put what was left of the milk back into the fridge and made a glass of water from the tap. 

It should be liquor at a time like this, Dick thought. He knew first hand that the sting of resurfacing memories could never be even closed to drowned except by the hair of what buried them in the first place. But it was a little early for all of that. He placed the glass on the counter in front of James, not sure if he even wanted to trust himself with it at the moment.

“Do you want to tell me what happened?” 

James eyed him suspiciously. Every part of the man was wound tight and waiting for an excuse to snap. Dick was starting to get a real sense of what James had meant the night before about which version of him to burn. He wondered if James had a preference. 

“I remembered what I was doing before I ended up at your port. I—” 

“Hey,” Dick said. “I don’t know anyone who doesn’t have a spirit that needs exorcising. Whatever you’ve done, it already happened. No reason to look back instead of forward.” 

“That’s the problem, none of it is linear. If those men find me I’ll be looking into my future instead of simply my past.” 

“If they’re released on bail it won’t end up on the scanner,” Dick said. “Only if they broke free or slipped away without proper release.” 

“They’ll have had their papers filed. Very powerful people control and supply them. They’ll disappear back onto the sidewalks and the alleys. They’ll live in the shadows until they find me.” 

“Then we’ll just have to find them first.” 

James picked up the glass and took several deep, desperate gulps. “Don’t you want to know what I’ve done?”

“With what I’m assuming of your training based on the way you moved last night and the men who were after you, the list of things you could have done is short and unflattering. Lucky for you I know a woman who specializes in knowing about these things.” 

He left James in the kitchen and crouched down by the coffee table, changing the frequency on the police scanner. When he hit the empty band he picked up the walkie. “Oracle,” he said. “This is an SOS from Blüdhaven. Please call in on the video link when you copy.” 

James was still in the kitchen, arms crossed over his chest. They’d been in each other’s acquaintance for less than ten hours and Dick knew that it was a tough ask for the man to believe in Dick when he couldn’t believe in himself. _Come on Babs_ , he thought. _Be quick, I need you_. 

The muscles in his thigh complained loudly, because he hadn’t properly stretched last night or this morning. He tipped back and sat down heavily, stretching his legs out in front of him and leaning forward to touch his toes. “Are you hungry?” he asked. It might be awhile before Barbara got back to them and Dick felt the need to fill the time with something. He’d never been the type of person to simply sit quietly across from people in empty rooms. He also knew he didn’t have enough food in the loft to cover the both of them for more than a day. The only person who visited him with any regularity was Wally, and it wasn’t as if Dick could afford to keep him fed anyway. 

Then he had another thought: _God willing, we’ll need supplies for more than a day._

James placed the palm of his flesh hand against his stomach absentmindedly. “I guess I am,” he said. “I don’t usually have to think about it.” 

“How long do they usually wake you up for?” 

“Depends, but even if it was for days I rarely ate anything more than I needed to. Other business to attend to, and all.” 

“Of course,” Dick said. He remembered Alfred forcing food down Bruce more than once, and he knew what it was like to get wrapped up in a mission. “Is there anything you want? There’s a decent Russian place around the block. Well, I say decent. I’m not exactly an expert on—

“Brooklyn,” James said, interrupting Dick’s ramble. 

“Huh?”

“I’m from Brooklyn originally. I think. And I could really go for some pizza.” 

“Don’t get much of that in Russia?” 

“The canteen at the military installation where they house the Red Rooms is as grim as you might imagine it to be.” 

“I’m going to need to know what a Red Room is.” 

“They’re training modules for—” 

Dick raised his hands. “Later,” he said “There will be time. For now I think we’ll be good enough with the finest pizza Blüdhaven has to offer. Do you want to come? Get your bearings in the daytime?”

“It’s probably for the best if I stay here. They didn’t get a chance to track us back to this place. Out on the street it will be a different story.” 

“You don’t think they have you chipped?” 

“I’m sure they do. I’m a very expensive toy for the Russian military. But even if they find me, I’ll have better luck fending them off here. Without hurting or alarming civilians, anyway.”

“Alright, but I’m trusting you. You just make sure you don’t hurt my television.” Dick grabbed his wallet and keys out of the bowl he kept on the coffee table, slid on a grey hoodie that was balled up in the corner, and slipped his feet into the tennis shoes at the end of the couch. “I need that. For important surveillance purposes.” 

For the first time since their encounter James flashed a genuine, lopsided smile. It didn’t make him look any less brooding, but it did something small to lighten the aura around him. Dick threw a “see ya” over his shoulder and headed out the door, taking that small victory with him.

. . . 

The ma and pop pizza shop down the street wasn’t due to open for another thirty minutes when he got there, but they let him in anyway. It helped that he’d knocked over a young man trying to rob them his first night in the neighborhood. Now he got free pizza whether he wanted it or not. He subsidized this by leaving unusually large tips. He’d learned more than a little about how smooth greased palms were from his time with Bruce.

“You look thin,” said the owner, by way of greeting. “You haven’t been eating again.” The owner, a middle-aged man with a medium build and dark grey hair, went by Papa Joe and played up his Italian accent. His name was really Charles, but whenever Dick asked about it he just placed his finger on the side of his nose and smiled. Papa Joe’s family actually was Italian, but hadn’t seen the mother country in a few generations. He might have tricked Dick into thinking it was genuine, but in times of stress Papa Joe reverted back to his heavy city accent. Being outwardly gruff didn’t make him any less of a mother figure to his children and the people of the neighborhood.

“I promise I’m eating,” Dick said.

“I haven’t seen you in a week at least.”

“I’ve been busy, Joe.”

Papa Joe crossed his arms. “Busy, you young people are always busy. My son doesn’t call anymore. I wouldn’t see my daughter if I didn’t keep her husband as an indentured servant. Young people are always off doing God knows what, forgetting the old people who raised you. Chasing the night, we used to call it. Back when I was a young man.”

“The night is a fickle mistress,” Dick said brightly.

Joe looked Dick up and down to punctuate just how much he didn’t believe a word of it before tilting his head back. “Milo!” he shouted, “Grayson is here! Start the man his regular!”

Milo stuck his head out of the kitchen door and grinned at Dick. “Starting early or staying late?”

“A little of column A,” Dick said, winking. “But make it two regulars and a cheese.”

“Aaaah,” Milo said, and gave him a knowing nod before ducking back into the kitchen to start the pies.

“I have a friend in town.” Dick crossed his arms, mimicking Joe and physically declaring that he wasn’t going to take any shit about it.

That did not stop Papa Joe’s curiosity, but little ever did. “The young ginger man?” he asked, suspicious.

“Not Wally.”

“Thank Maria,” Joe breathed. “That young man is a menace.” Dick had brought Wally down to Papa Joe’s once. He’d eaten right through their good will and into three hours of dishwashing duty. It was a point of contention he couldn’t bring up with either Joe and Wally if he didn’t want to listen to ten minutes of bickering, but the memory of it made Dick smile. 

Joe misread the reaction. “So a new friend then. A lady friend? One you don’t want to bring out during the day?”

Dick reflexively laughed at the insinuation. “Not that kind of a friend, Pop. A guy, a work acquaintance.”

“Maybe not yet,” Papa Joe said. “I hear things in this neighborhood, young man. And it’s not impossible that the lady killer has run out of ladies.”

Dick grinned. “I do not kill them, Pop. I let them come and go of their own free will.” 

Papa Joe made a soft humming sound in the back of his throat. He could be just as bad as Bruce once he’d gotten hold of a clue and Dick wondered what it was about him that became such a puzzle for the father figures in his life. He had himself worked out just fine. Though, Papa Joe’s questions had implanted a small idea in the back of his head that he snuffed out quickly.

Milo kicked his way out of the kitchen carrying three large pizza boxes with a white paper sack perched on top. “Zeppole,” he said. “They’re like breakfast for people who don’t go to sleep.”

Dick opened the bag and peered inside. He couldn’t stop himself from snatching up a couple of the tiny, warm pastry puffs. By the time he accepted the boxes from Milo his hands and sweatshirt were sprinkled with powdered sugar.

Milo followed him to the door and flipped the CLOSED sign to OPEN as he let Dick out. “Be sure to bring your friend in next time.”

“I don’t know that he’ll be here that long.” He said it lightly and meant it as a tease, but it was also undeniably true.

“They never are,” Milo said, and then gave Dick a short wave before closing the door behind him.

Dick looked up and down the street before heading back toward his building. The early afternoon was his favorite time to be out in plainclothes. It was the sweet spot between people going to work and workers rushing to and from lunch and no matter how old he got, being out at that time always felt a little reckless, like he was playing hooky. 

When he reached his apartment the door was propped open with a brick. That wouldn’t have been extraordinary in any of a number of the tenement buildings in the city, but part of Dick’s lease agreement was that he was the only person who lived in the building. The company who rented the space below him for storage didn’t usually get shipments this early in the day, and the shipments wouldn’t have been snuck in a side door anyway.

He slipped inside the stairwell and nudged the brick out of the way so that the door closed tight behind him, then he placed the pizza boxes on the floor in the corner. Dick took the stairs two at a time as silently as he could on the balls of his feet. When he made it up to his door it was closed and locked, but the noise on the other side belied the intruders he expected. He passed his key card over the electric pad and slowly opened the door to the loft, using it as a shield. Almost immediately, two shots clanged against the solid iron. He ducked his head around to assess the situation. 

James was lying prone on the floor, and there were two men in the loft dressed in black slacks and grey jackets. One of them was on his knees, leaning over James and the other was headed toward Dick fast across the small space. Dick jumped back, pulling the door with him and then sprang forward again, throwing the whole of his weight against it. The intruder hit it from the other side and Dick kept pushing, knocking him off his feet. Then he sidestepped it and let it swing closed. 

The man stumbled to his feet and took a step forward. Dick rushed him, knocking the gun from his hand with a side kick. He then used his momentum to fall forward and push the palm of his hand up into the man’s nose. Swinging around, he grabbed the man about the neck and pulled him into a choke hold, placing the man between himself and the other intruder who was now standing over James and pointing his gun at Dick. 

“If you shoot you’ll kill him,” Dick said. “Let’s just talk this out.”

“I’m not here to talk, Mr. Grayson,” the man said. His accent was less thick than the men from the night before, but still clipped and definitely Russian. “But this won’t kill him regardless of my intentions. It will merely knock him out for several hours. Like your new friend here. He should stay nice and silent until we have time to get him on a plane back to Russia. You may have noticed that he’s dangerous and unpredictable. It would be nearly impossible to transfer him awake, his mental state being what it is. We prefer to keep our merchandise on ice until absolutely necessary.”

“You’re not taking him anywhere,” Dick growled. “He doesn’t want to go with you. Didn’t you get our message last night in the alley?” 

“I beg to differ,” the man said. His tone was casual and almost bored, which really grated at Dick’s nerves. Gotham could spoil a man for opponents with a sense of theatrics. 

“You’ll have to go through me to take him,” Dick said. “And if you know my name and where to find me, and you travel in the same circles as my new friend there, then I’m guessing you know exactly who I am and what I can do.” 

“Ask yourself who you’re saving, Mr. Grayson. He’s a murderer. He’s killed dozens of men—well-prepared, heavily armed men. And he didn’t give them a second thought. You let this man into your home? You would sleep with him a mere wall away for another night and not worry about what he might do to you when his programming kicks back in?”

“No.” It wasn’t that it hadn’t occurred to Dick that James might not revert back to his factory settings, but he’d always erred on the side of optimism. “He only does what you make him do. The real him, the one underneath, doesn’t want to do any of it. That’s the version of him I met and the version of him that slept in my living room. The longer he’s away from you, the better he will get.” 

The man laughed. “You don’t think we’ve placed a fail-safe inside of him? You don’t think there’s a kill switch? It’s deep, but it’s there. The moment he steps foot inside his hometown. The moment he starts to look for his friends, he will become ours again. He will stop at nothing to find us and come back to our arms. Those of us who gave him back his life.” 

“Then why the clean up squad? If you’re so sure he will take care of himself?”

“He’s still an expensive toy for us, Mr. Grayson. He’s worth more to us alive, and we can’t be sure that he would survive his search for us.” 

“That’s not a life.” 

“It’s all relative. Now, give me my man back, or I will shoot you with a tranquilizer dart, and I will not miss.” 

Dick squeezed his forearms together against the man’s neck. The fingers scrabbling weakly against the sleeves of his sweatshirt didn’t even manage to slow him down until the man was slumped at his feet, unconscious on the floor. “I don’t think it is relative.” 

The intruder took a shot at Dick, and for the second time in as many days, Dick ran straight toward the gunfire. His new acquaintance was having an unexpected effect on his tactics that he would have to rein in. He pushed off to the left at the last moment and the dart caught the baggy edge of his pants leg and stuck in the fabric. The next shot whizzed by his ear as he lunged forward and tackled the man around the waist, pushing him back so that they both hit the wooden floor clear of James’s body and slid toward the window. When they came to rest, the intruder’s arm was cocked outward because of how he’d hit the wall and the muzzle of the gun was pointed at his leg. Dick wrapped his hand around the man’s fingers and pulled the trigger. 

His eyes were watery and livid, rimmed with red, as they glared up at Dick. “I’m not the last. They’ll do anything to get him back. They’ll send more. They’ll send _her_. Not even the Winter Soldier can match her.” 

“Yeah, well, she’s never met me,” Dick said. He waited until he was sure the man was out cold before rolling off of him. He crawled to James’s body to take his pulse and make sure he was still breathing. Then he climbed to his feet and crossed to his bedroom to get the Kevlar rope and the cordless phone. 

The precinct phone rang twice before the desk officer picked up. “Hi, Smith? It’s me, Grayson. Yeah, I know I’m a lucky son of a gun. Two days off in a row.” He dragged the body of his first attacker across the room and propped him up against the wall next to the second. “It’s true,” he said into the phone. “You guys keep keeping the streets safe for assholes like me and I’ll keep savoring my weekends.” 

He propped the second attacker up next to the first and used the rope to tie their hands together good and tight before he wrapped it around their legs. “Hey,” I’ve had a break in at my loft. I know, I know, I really should move to a safer neighborhood. But the pizza is so good here.” Dick opened an eyelid on each of them to make sure they were out. “Yeah, I’ve apprehended them. They might be Russian mob, though. They were too heavily armed to be your average ten penny takers. It’s probably best to transfer them to Gotham as soon as we can. The general pop here might not be able to hold ‘em. Yes. Thanks man. Give my love to Jean.” 

Dick clicked the phone off and pointed the tranq gun at the first attacker, who was starting to twitch like he might come around. He looked back at James and let his temper rise for the first time during the encounter. Without turning back he shot the man with a dart right under his rib cage. Then he wiped his prints from the gun, removed his sneakers, and went back downstairs to retrieve the pizzas.

. . .

The men from the precinct hadn’t been and gone five minutes before Barbara was calling him over the video link. Dick stepped into his bedroom and closed the door. He pulled out the small computer and placed it on his dresser, flipping it open to see Barbara’s face cloaked in concern.

“I didn’t know you’d started throwing pot luck breakfasts for the Russian mob,” she said. 

“Good afternoon to you too, Ms. Gordon,” he said. “I take it you’ve been listening to the Blüdhaven scanner?” 

“I always listen to the Blüdhaven scanner, Dick.” It came out soft, not teasing like her opening statement. As much as Dick had run away from Gotham so he could be his own man, it didn’t hurt to know there was an angel watching over him at all times. Barbara gave her head a tiny shake and, as if remembering it was Oracle he needed now, she steeled her voice. “Who were they?” 

“I don’t know,” Dick said. “I think I’ve gotten in over my head with a stray I picked up last night though. I need you to do an all points search on something code named the Winter Soldier. I don’t know if he’s the only one they refer to that way or if there are others.”

“On it,” she said. “Do you want me to leave the link open, or do you want me to get back to you later with all I have.” 

“You can get back to me. We should be safe in the loft for the time being. Oh, also, the head of the operation here said he wasn’t the last coming after the guy. Mentioned a _her_. It was a definite pejorative the way he used it, and backed with a pretty heavy helping of fear. If there’s someone coming for this guy who’s bigger and badder than the men already involved, I need to know.”

“Already scanning,” Barbara said. “Anything else you need to know before I click off?” 

“How’s the old man?” 

“Oh, you know. Avenging the night, taking the day in hand. He’s as stubborn as ever and twice as ornery. And he misses you.” 

“He tell you that?” 

“He doesn’t have to tell me, and neither do you.”

Dick smiled. “Does it ever hurt? Knowing everything all the time?” 

“Only when you guys forget that I do. Oracle out.” 

“Nightwing out.” He looked at the blank screen for a moment before closing the computer and placing it back in the top drawer of the dresser. He looked down at himself and remembered that he hadn’t showered since before patrol the night before. He slipped out of his now scarred gym clothes and carried a pair of jeans and a white undershirt into the bathroom with him. 

The hot water was incredibly welcome over his tired body. He forced himself to actually wash and shave instead of just standing. When he was dressed and had opened the door to the bathroom, white towel draped over his head, he was surprised to see James sitting up on the couch. He was leaning forward over his lap and holding his head like he’d drunk his weight in one fifty-one. 

“They said you’d be out for a couple of hours at least,” Dick said, rubbing his hair with the towel and draping it around his shoulders. 

James looked up, confusion flitting across his face before he seemed to settle in to the present again. “They never take into account what they’ve done with me when they make those calculations. They’d need enough to fell a good, strong, wild Russian horse before they put me out for more than an hour. And they’re hesitant to use that much, for probably obvious reasons.”

“The man did say you were important and expensive.” 

“I tried to tell you,” James said, with something akin to pride filling his voice. 

Dick wondered if every soldier needed a purpose. He certainly did, even though the army he fought in wasn’t protecting any singular entity or nation. He wondered if by making this man into a weapon they’d also made him into something proud and strong and put a chink in their own armor that way. 

“They also said they wouldn’t be the last sent for you. Do you know who _her_ might be?”

“Natalia,” James said, his voice soft. He looked down at his hands. 

“A friend of yours?” 

“A girl, woman. A woman I trained in the red room. She was a scrapper to begin with, but with the right knowledge and tools she became a holy terror.” 

“Do you know how to fight her off if they send her out to find you?” 

“I do, but you’d better pray they don’t.”

“I try and be a gentleman,” Dick said. “But I have no qualms about hitting a lady who comes at me swinging.”

“It’s not her I’m worried about, friend,” James said. 

The word sounded so casual as it escaped his lips. Dick hadn’t been prepared for it. He immediately felt guilty for the nanosecond of misgiving that the intruder’s speech had given him. James was lost and he needed help, help which Dick thought he could offer. They didn’t know each other, but they’d come to a sort of truce and Dick was flush with pleasant feelings to know that it was mutual. 

“I’m feeling a bit shaky from the tranqs. Do you have anything that might take the edge off?” 

“I don’t have any tranquilizer serum you can just drink, if it’s hair of the dog you’re looking for.”

James laughed. “No, but some food would work.” 

Dick hit his forehead with the palm of his hand. “The pizza! I’d stowed it away after tying up the men and didn’t remember to eat it myself.”

“That would be a good start,” James said. 

“Do you want it heated up?” 

James stood and stretched as Dick pulled the box from the fridge and placed it on the counter. “Cold works. I never thought I’d miss cold pizza.”

“Cures everything that ails ya. Hangovers, war wounds, and broken hearts.” 

“Yeah,” James said quietly. He picked a slice from the box and took a thoughtful bite of it. The open and almost neutral look on his face was promising. He’d managed to way lay fear and anger and black shit from the night before. Hell, if he could do that, then Dick might almost start to believe his own bullshit optimism. 

They ate in silence for two slices a piece before the video link alarm rang across the apartment. “Excuse me,” Dick said, and padded his way to the bedroom and set up the computer. “Shoot, Babs.” 

“So I’ve looked up what you wanted and it’s pretty grim. The man you’re looking for is one James Buchanan Barnes, went missing from the United States 107th Infantry Regiment back during WWII. He was considered dead until a few years later when someone caught video footage of him leaving a crime scene. Turns out he’d turned coat and started working for the Russians, which he did all through the Cold War. He’s...” Babs paused, a confused wrinkle forming on her forehead.. 

“He’s what?” Dick said. 

“He’s standing behind you,” she said. Dick turned to see James looming over his shoulder, pizza slice still in his mouth. 

“Yeah, I forgot to mention that, I guess,” Dick said sheepishly. “This is the stray.” 

“Richard Grayson,” Babs said. “Do not make me come down there and knock some sense into you.” 

“It’s a long story,” Dick said, “but he’s not going to hurt me.”

“Not on purpose, anyway,” James said. “I’m working through some things.”

“Aren’t we all.” Babs frowned, unamused. “But it’s just as well. Maybe you can elaborate on the _her_ that Dick wanted me to look into.” 

“Natalia Romanova. I helped train her in Russia. You might also look for Natasha Romanoff and Oktober. She’s stunning, and she’ll be their last resort, because she’s sometimes more temperamental in the field than the other agents. It won’t get that far though, because you’re right. I’m leaving.”

“What? You can’t,” Dick said. “Those men almost had you. They would have dragged you back if I hadn’t returned when I did. I don’t know how they managed it, because I’m pretty sure you could cold clock an elephant with that arm, but it’s not safe for you out there.”

“And it’s not safe for you with me in here. They got to me with a very specific code word meant to disengage operatives. They were merely sent as clean up. Talia will be sent as offense and neither of us will be the better for it, even if we do manage to neutralize her effort.”

“That doesn’t mean we don’t try.” 

“He’s right,” Babs said. “As often as I try not to admit that out loud. If you truly think you can get yourself under control and don’t want to go back to them, then we have to do what we can to help you. We know so many people who have been through too many things because their minds have been tampered with.” 

“Be that as it may, I’ll have a better chance if I’m on the move. And if I can get out of here soon enough, they won’t even send her to Blüdhaven. They’ll send her to the place they project I’ll go next. Probably to Steve.”

“Who’s Steve?” Dick didn’t mean it to come out as accusatory as it did, and when he turned to see if Babs knew more than he did she had a curious look on her face that he’d seen before. He gave her a small head shake and she simply raised an eyebrow in response. 

“Steve Rogers,” James said. 

“Captain America, the man you worked with before defecting?”

“I didn’t defect. I was kidnapped, essentially. Brought back to life and never left to regather myself, but yes. Captain America.”

“Oh,” Dick said. “I can’t believe I didn’t think of that. Barnes. Bucky Barnes?”

James grimaced. “Yeah, when I was a kid.” 

“That’s.” Dick scratched the back of his arm absently. “That’s incredible. My dad used to talk about you, when I was a kid. How are you?” 

James held up a hand to stop Dick from asking any more questions. “Frozen, remember?” 

Dick nodded and turned back to Babs, trying to remain professional. Inside he felt like a child at Christmas. This was almost as exciting as when he met Superman for the first time. “Those men, the leader told me that if you went home or started searching for your friend that it would awaken something else within you and you’d switch back on, stop at nothing to return to them.” 

“Sounds about right. But if I can get the right messages to the right people with enough of a head start I can hopefully be picked up and detained by our side until they figure out how to break me out for good.” 

“Just tell me what you need,” Babs said. “I am the most connected person on the planet.” 

“Can you hack your way into the S.H.I.E.L.D. mainframe? An outside message would probably be intercepted.” 

“I can try, at the very least. Is there any specific wording or code you need to get through to let them know it’s you?”

“I’ll let you get to it, then,” Dick said, and excused himself from the room. 

He was used to feeling out of his depth in certain areas, but he didn’t like feeling useless. Could it really be that there was nothing he could do? No way he could save this man, a hero he’d looked up to as a kid, himself? Could the best shot really be to just send him on his way without insurance and hope that he made it all right? Dick didn’t even send postcards that carelessly. He sat down heavily on the couch and turned on the television, hoping to take his mind off of everything for a few moments. 

It was mid-afternoon by that time, and there wasn’t much on by way of entertainment. He flipped through a game show, two soap operas, and a church service, before settling on a national sportscaster doing a play by play recount of the latest Gotham Rogues game. Dick dropped the remote onto the cushion beside him and tried not to listen in to James and Babs’s conversation. They were showing triple angle replay of the winning touchdown when James came out and perched awkwardly on the opposite end of the couch. 

“Football,” he said. “You never know what sorts of things you will miss desperately when given the chance. Even if you didn’t really pay attention to them when you could.”

“Not a football fan?” 

“Nah, baseball. That was the game Steve and I followed the closest. The Dodgers. They could do no wrong for us. We caught a foul ball one game. Well, I caught it. It would have taken Steve’s arm clean off at the speed it was going. He wasn’t always so tough, you see.” James wiped at his eye with the palm of his hand. “I could be your granddad.” 

“I don’t know about granddad,” Dick said. “But you weren’t allowed to live all those lives you might have had, so it’s kind of a moot point.” 

“I guess.” 

“It’s not a guess, it’s a fact.”

James looked him over for a moment, amused. “You really don’t like not being able to help, do you?” 

“I wasn’t taught to back down.” 

“None of us are taught to back down,” James said. “But if you could only catch glimpses of yourself. If you were only conscious for short periods of time, what would you do with them? Would you allow someone you didn’t know to die for you, just because they were willing?” 

Dick crossed his arms over his chest, even though he realized it made him look like a petulant child. In some ways he would always be the Boy Wonder. “I wouldn’t let anyone die for me on purpose. Ever.”

“And there we have it. You, Dick Grayson, are a hypocrite.” 

The comment chafed, but James was right. Hell, it might chafe more because Dick knew he was right. “Fine,” he said. “Go wherever you need to go. It’s not like we’re partners or anything. You don’t have to ask me for permission.” 

“I know,” James said, holding his mouth in a careful half grin. He looked more amused than Dick felt he had any right to be. “I should wait until night to leave, if it’s alright with you. The darkness makes for better cover.”

“You’re welcome to stay as long as you like, and I mean that, just in case some of my sense works its way through that apparently thick skull of yours.”

“Noted.” 

“Is there anything you want to do? You know, while you’re still you?”

“You don’t know any loose women, do you?” James said. 

It was Dick’s turn to laugh, because it wasn’t the answer he’d expected to come so quickly. “I’m a cop, I know where to find a few. I’m not close with any of them, though, if it’s a recommendation you’re looking for. Also, what kind of terrible spy are you that you aren’t up to your metal armpit in women?”

“Not that kind of spy, I’m afraid. But if you happen to know if there’s an opening for a 007, I’ll take it in a flash. I think I’d quite like some warmer climates.”

Dick was looking at the arm now, studying the way the different pieces fit together. It was rather impressive, for a fifty year old piece of Soviet equipment. “Does it hurt?” he asked.

“Not really. Not anymore,” James said. “It was hell the first couple times they tried. But they kept me sufficiently drugged for most of it. And now, well, I’m not really focused on it if it ever does hurt while I’m on a job.”

“Do you dream, while you’re under?”

“I don’t think so. If I do they’re so few and far between that it hardly matters. And there’s a process for waking up that involves being immediately fed a job and whole new set of brain wipes, so I wouldn’t remember it long if I did.” 

“I just.” Dick didn’t even know what he wanted to say. He just knew he wanted James to stop talking about it, but he couldn’t stop asking questions. It was incredibly painful to listen to and it had to be incredibly painful to relive like this with a complete stranger. James seemed pretty accepting of all of it at the moment, which didn’t deaden Dick’s feelings that he was interviewing a train wreck. Que Sera, Sera, Dick supposed. He ran his hands through his hair and pushed it back out of his face.

“No, it’s okay. You want to know, but then you realize you don’t. Let’s uh. Tell me about the Dodgers.”

“Well, I don’t know much about baseball, but I do know the Dodgers are in Los Angeles now.” 

“What?” James settled back into the couch, relaxing. “That’s the worst news I’ve heard in my life.”

“And you are a guy who probably gets some pretty bad news!”

James grinned at him, wide and open. “Thank you, Dick. I’m glad you were there last night. If nothing else I’ve had a whole extra day away from that life and it’s a small blessing.” He leaned across the couch and kissed Dick on the cheek. As he pulled away he muttered some Russian under his breath. 

To say that the gesture caught Dick off guard would have been would have been underselling it by a mile. It was probably just the way people James was close to said ‘thank you’, and yet he couldn’t help feeling like it was heavier than that. “You’re welcome?” he said.

“I would apologize,” James said, “but I’m not sorry. A man of many minds must take his familiarities where he can. And aside from Nat, you’re the only person who’s been friendly to me for a long time.”

“Nat, the woman coming to find you?” 

“I said I was worried about you if she came, not me.” 

“And I told you, I can handle myself, steely,” Dick said. Then, without quite knowing why, he closed the space between them and kissed James full on the mouth. 

He hadn’t thought about what James might do either, though he’d been reasonably sure the man wouldn’t punch him in the face. In his time he’d been called careless and impulsive and reckless, but never stupid. Dick certainly hadn’t been prepared for James to immediately lean into him and return the kiss, to press so hard against Dick’s lips and teeth that he pushed him back into the cushions.

Kissing James, as in any other interaction Dick had had with him, was like arguing aggressively. James dominated. He was stronger and larger and he didn’t know how to go without a fight, but he also demanded dominance in return. Dick soon found himself on his knees, pressed up against James in the middle of the couch, with his head ducked down so that he could still reach James’s lips. James’s flesh and bone hand had worked its way up under Dick’s shirt while his metal one gripped the nape of Dick’s neck, holding him in place. Dick closed his eyes and slid his left leg sideways over James’s thighs and sat, straddling his lap. 

Dick grasped James’s hips with his hands and focused on the scrabbling of their lips and tongues and teeth. For as much as James’s kisses were missions, they didn’t demand a further state of attack. The hand clamped onto Dick’s waist didn’t wander and James’s hips didn’t move, in spite of the erection which was obvious through his running pants. He didn’t want everything. He just wanted this. Dick was okay with this. 

After several minutes of frenzy, the kisses slowed. They became lazy explorations. Dick wasn’t sure how long they went on, but his lips were becoming numb. He opened his eyes to see James looking into him. There was a moment of a staring contest, but then James blinked and broke away. He exhaled slowly. 

Dick wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “I’ve got nothing,” he said. 

“Not even, of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world?”

“Oh, so you have seen some films.” 

“I saw that one in the theater, my friend.” 

“You will have to tell me all about your five cent popcorn.” Dick stretched his arms and arched his back, trying to shake away some of the drowsiness he now felt. 

James squirmed a bit under him. “Now you’re just being cruel,” he said, and shoved Dick onto the couch. 

“I can’t even say I’ve never been thanked like that, because I have, and Kori would kill me if I insinuated she wasn’t as big and strong as you. It’s not officially on the roster, but I’m pretty sure she reads minds.” 

“I think most women must.” 

Dick grunted in agreement, flopped onto his back, and stretched out so that his head was on the far armrest and his legs were draped over James’s lap. “So, is there anything else you want to do until nightfall?” 

“I would like another shower.”

“Have at it. I dropped your stuff in the washer last night, I’ll go and pull it.” He stood up and resituated his jeans, thinking he might need a shower too. He was halfway across the kitchen when James called out to him.

“Yeah?” He paused mid-step and looked back over his shoulder. 

James was leaning against the door frame to his bedroom, brow furrowed. He’d reclaimed the set in his jaw that had been missing since the call with Babs. “In all seriousness, thank you.” 

“It’s noth—”

“No,” James said. “It’s not nothing to me. I spend a lot of time alone, even when I am awake. I don’t realize when I want things most of the time.” 

“It’s uh, it’s okay. I understand. Dudes find me irresistible.”

“I am going to let Natalia strangle you with her thighs.” 

“Can you record that for me?” 

James disappeared and the door slammed behind him, but Dick was sure that there’d been at least something of a smile on his lips before he’d gone.

. . .

From the roof of the loft the streets below them were dark, cast in shadow by the taller buildings around it. Dick scanned the horizon where the orange glow from the lights reached up and bounced off the low lying clouds. “Are you sure she’s coming here, then?”

“Your Oracle said that Fury alerted her to a possible person of interest in the area. She is looking for me. She will come to where she knows I was last if there isn’t intel that I have moved on.”

“So what are we looking for?”

James clipped his sniper rifle to its strap and slung it across his back. “It would do us no good to look. You should go about your patrol. She will find us.” 

Dick eyed the gun warily. “You were a little slow last night. You going to be able to keep up?”

“Just go, fly boy. I’ll keep up.” 

“Challenge accepted,” Dick said. He dove off the roof to the loft and flipped a couple times, landing on the roof of the building below. He rolled onto his feet and took off across the open space at a sprint. James appeared over the edge of the roof just as Dick flew from it across to another. He stayed a building behind Dick until they reached the downtown clock tower. There they both perched atop the spire and looked out across the major thoroughfares. The city stretched out before them, glittering and pulsing. 

“It’s peaceful, way up here,” James said. There was a faint sound of car horns and music spilling from night clubs, but most of it was pulled away by the wind before it reached them.

“Do you not spend much reconnaissance time with a bird’s eye view?”

“I’m more of a wolf in the forest. Singular targets are easier to keep track of than just looking for anything. How do you know where to be?”

“I listen to the police scanner, mostly,” he said, tapping the earpiece. “Downtown does have the most concentrated mischief, but I could keep tabs on it anywhere. I just like being up here. It clears my head and reminds me of home.” 

James slid his gun around and propped it up on his shoulder, studying the streets below with the sight. It was a mostly quiet evening. A few robberies popped up, but the cops handled them quickly enough that Dick didn’t feel the need to interfere. The moon was high above them before anything interesting happened.

“Hm,” James said, placing his gun away. He narrowed his eyes. “Do you hear that?” 

Dick pulled the earpiece from his ear and listened. There was a very slight cry coming in over the the wind. He scanned the landscape. “That parking garage,” he said, pointing to a structure three blocks away. 

“Go,” James said. “I’ll follow you.” 

Dick nodded and jumped out into the air, letting it cradle him as he landed onto the lower level of the clock tower which he used as a springboard to fling himself in the direction of the garage. It didn’t take him long to get to the roof of the building. The screaming got louder the closer he got. It changed pitch as his feet hit solid ground again. He was worried about what he would find when he finally located the disturbance. 

The ruckus wasn’t coming from the top floor of the garage, but the floor below, giving the noise more concrete and space to echo about. When he located the cause of the commotion there was a young man, crying on the ground in the corner. He was bloody and very obviously beaten with the tire iron that was lying at his feet. Dick cased the area and didn’t see anyone else. He moved forward, slowly. 

“What happened here?” he asked.

The young man looked up at him, eyes wide, and started screaming with a renewed fervor. 

“I told her! I wouldn’t do it no more.” He choked. “No, don’t come near me! Let me go! It’s my first time!”

“Shhh!” Dick said emphatically. “Hush! I’m not going to hurt you. Tell me what’s happened here.”

A click of heels sounded on the concrete behind him and the young man started scrabbling with his hands and feet, trying to back up, even though he was already pressed against the wall of the garage. 

“Don’t take it personally,” a thick female voice said. “It’s not you he’s afraid of. I’ve put the fear of God into him. He won’t be a problem for your city again.” 

“I appreciate you helping clean up my city, miss,” Dick said. “But I don’t know why you’d trouble yourself. Seeing as how you’re so far from home.” He turned around just as she stepped out of the shadows. 

The woman was dressed all in black with a shock of red hair that fell about her shoulders. The gold of her belt glinted with the thin light from the fluorescent bulbs. “I’m something of an ambassador,” she said. “I always try to leave a country cleaner than it was when I found it.” 

“You must be Natalia. I’m Nightwing. Welcome to Blüdhaven.” 

“I know who you are. I stopped by your loft, but you had already gone. More’s the pity. This young man could have stolen that sports car and gone on his merry way if you’d not been so eager to get out this evening.” 

Dick pulled an escrima stick from his holster and held it in front of him defensively. “I don’t want to hurt you, Natalia. You look young and impressionable and I can’t have that on my conscience. But you have got to go, and my friend has informed me that you won’t do so without something of a fight.”

“Something of one, yes,” she said, and smiled cold and hard. “James always does say the nicest things. Where is my old friend?” 

“I don’t know. He couldn’t keep up.” Dick looked about, trying to find a trace of James’s presence, but there was nothing. Perhaps he’d changed his mind about going back and wanted to stay out of sight, in which case Dick was going to do everything he could to encourage this woman to leave empty handed. 

“Now I know that’s a lie.” Natalia took a few quick steps forward and then kicked at Dick, catching the nightstick with the heel of her boot. She dragged it down and his hand with it until he let go of it, pulling the other one from its holster and using it catch her under the thigh. He tried to throw her off balance, but she did a backflip and neatly landed on her feet in front of him. 

“Acrobat, huh?” he said. “Me too!” Dick jumped up and grasped the piping hanging above him in the garage. He swung his leg out and caught her by the neck, tipping her forwards and pulling her toward him. She spun around and punched him just below his ribs. He dropped down from the pipe and reached out for her, catching her under the jaw with the tip of his stick. 

Natalia jumped back at the contact, but didn’t take the time to check over the wound. Instead she did a front handspring and vaulted herself, catching him around the neck with her thighs. She spun around and dropped him hard onto the concrete. “Have you had enough yet, blue jay?” she asked. 

“Oh honey,” Dick said. “I can do this all night.” He elbowed her in the kidney and tried to catch her in a headlock in her surprise, but only managed to slip sideways. She wrapped his arm around behind his back. He dropped the second stick. 

“You’re good, kid. You’re just not good enough.” 

“I’ve never been told that before.” 

“Cute and smug, just how I like them.” She patted his cheek with her hand. “James,” she called. It slipped out low and long, almost blending in with the continued moans of the young man still on the ground ten yards from them. “James, weren’t you even going to help your friend here? It’s awfully unkind of you to just watch while I wipe the floor with the poor young man.” 

“I don’t know,” James called back. He stepped out from behind a pillar at the far end of the garage and they both turned their heads. “He looked like he was holding his own for a while.” 

“Hm, he might have been,” Natalia said. “We should bring him back with us. Don’t you think he’d make a good addition to the team?”

“I think he’s stubborn, and we should leave him where we found him.” He took a few steps forward and then paused. “Let him go, Talia.” 

“How can I be sure he won’t cause me any more trouble?” 

“You’ll be polite, now that we’ve all been introduced, won’t you Dick?” 

“If she promises to leave the young thugs to me,” Dick said. Then, as if it was an after thought, “You weren’t recording that, were you?” 

Natalia tightened her grip on his neck for a moment and coaxed a gasp from his lungs before untangling herself from him and standing up. Dick sat up on the cold concrete floor and worked his neck around, stretching the muscles. He watched as she rushed toward James and threw her arms around his neck. 

They spoke to each other in Russian. There was a tremor in her voice that sounded legitimately worried. If he hadn’t spent the last 24 hours with the man he would have been surprised by this, but it seemed that James Barnes was just the kind of person people wanted to be there for, even though he was more than capable of taking care of himself. Dick wondered if James noticed that, or if he thought he was alone. They kissed, like lovers who hadn’t seen each other for a very long time, and Dick looked away.

The sound of heavy footfalls approached him. “Come on.” Dick turned back to see James holding his arm out. Dick grasped his hand and let himself be pulled to his feet with ease. 

“She fights like a girl,” Dick said. 

James let out a cough of a laugh. “I warned you.” 

“You did. So what now?” 

“Now I’m going to go home.”

Dick looked down, unable to force himself to make eye contact even though he wanted to. “But won’t S.H.I.E.L.D. be looking for you now?”

“They might. God willing they might even find me, eventually, now that they’ve got a more concrete trail.” James dropped a heavy hand on Dick’s shoulder. “Hopefully they’ll commend you for that.” 

“Hopefully?” 

“Fury doesn’t always show his pleasure the way you would expect a person to. He might just show it by not confiscating every piece of equipment the Oracle used to infiltrate his systems.”

“I’d like to see him try.” Dick looked up again and grinned. “Barbara also fights like a girl.” 

“She’s beaten you before hasn’t she?”

“So many times.” He couldn’t help but feel more than a little proud to know Babs and count her as an ally.

James held out his hand. “Until we meet again, my friend.” 

Dick clasped it. “Hopefully we’ll be on the same side of the line if that happens.” 

“If we’re not, I have confidence you can drag me back.” 

Dick didn’t let go of James’s hand. He couldn’t bring himself to quite yet. “Why? You were so afraid last night of not knowing who you are. Why go back so willingly?”

James turned to look at Natalia and Dick’s eyes followed. She was standing with her back to them, hands on her hips. “She needs me. If she doesn’t succeed she’ll be punished, and she’s already been punished enough because of me I’m sure. I can’t leave them without helping her escape as well. Not really. I trained her and I’m responsible for her. And, I love her. I owe her this.” 

“Fair enough,” Dick said. He let go of James’s hand and took a step backwards. 

“You’re a good man, Dick Grayson,” James said. “Don’t ever let go of that, no matter who tries to drive it out of you.” 

Dick gave his head a sharp upward nod, but didn’t say anything else. James turned away and walked with confident strides toward the opposite side of the garage. When he caught up with Natalia he wrapped his arm around her waist and tugged her along with him. He didn’t look like the defeated man Dick had met the night before. He was no longer afraid of his own mind. 

Dick watched them go before turning to deal with the young man bleeding out onto the floor. He retrieved his nightsticks on the way to inspect the damage. The boy—Dick could see now that he was no more than eighteen—was no longer conscious. The adrenaline of the attack had seeped out of his system in the time he’d been left to sit. 

“I hope you’ve learned something about getting in the way of redheads,” he said, as he bent down and threw the boy’s arm over his shoulder, scooping him off the cement. Dick walked him down to the bottom floor of the garage and then watched over him from the opposite building until an ambulance came to pick him up.

. . .

When he made it back to the loft that night, the place felt empty. He made a quick search, looking for anything Natalia might have left behind, but didn’t find any bugs, transmitters, or even dust prints. Then he called Babs.

“I’ve got word that your stray is headed back to Russia. The people at S.H.I.E.L.D. are not pleased with you.” 

“They’ll get over it, I’m sure.” He picked up the computer and carried it to the bed with him. He placed it on the pillow next to him and then dropped onto the mattress, fully clothed and on top of the comforter, too tired to shuck out of his costume and tuck in. 

“What is it, Dick?” Babs asked softly. 

“You wouldn’t let anything like that happen to me, would you? You’d find me, right?”

“I will always find you,” Babs said. “You’re the Boy Wonder. I wouldn’t know what to do without you. I don’t know who I’d be without you.”

“Still stunning,” he said. Dick supposed that was the truth. He wouldn’t presume to be responsible for Babs the way James felt responsible for Natalia, but love and friendship were the most important things in his small world. They were cravings he knew he had in spades. He couldn’t hold that against James for very long. He yawned and closed his eyes. 

“You’re not so bad yourself,” she said. “Hey, I’ve got Bruce incoming.”

“Bruce Wayne has been cockblocking us since I was sixteen years old.” He curled up onto his side and hugged his pillow tight under his head. “Go on then, save your city.” 

“Oracle out,” Babs said. 

“Nightwing out.” The light from the computer shut off and the space behind his eyelids changed from electric shadow to pitch black.


End file.
